Talk:Haitian Creole/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

The h sound (and changes made to Orthography and phonology)

Even though there is an h in the alphabet, there is no h sound like hotel in English. The sentence that says, "There are no silent letters..." I do not believe that is factual. Can we get a check on that? Second opinion maybe?

Also, I've added the non-native consonants dj sound as in djaz meaning jazz in English. There are over 10 words like this in the Haitian-Creole dictionary. Also, according to B. B. Schieffelin, K. A. Woolard, and P. V. Kroskrity (eds.), Language Ideologies: Practice and Theory (pp. 285–316) (PDF shortened version pgs. 427-443)". p. 433. Semi-vowels and nasal are separate, summed up into four categories (not including the non-native consonant "dj") Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:29, 1 December 2014 (UTC)

Literature

The use of Haitian creole as a literary language can be traced back to - insert more information.

This is a stub of a new section that I want to add later. Please don't remove. Boukman (talk) 21:11, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Language family

I undid revision 706266716 by Moalli. The language is a French‑based creole, but the reliable sources cited support that it’s also Indo‑European, and of West African origin. I’m not sure how to display the plural ancestry of the language yet remain within the problematic bounds of the single‑line ancestry provided by {{Infobox language}}. Thoughts? —LLarson (said & done) 17:18, 22 February 2016 (UTC)

Other Creole languages simply list the type of creole they are such as Jamaican Patois and Louisiana Creole French. Ethnologue also categorizes it this way. Most French Creoles, specifically those in the Caribbean, also have both Indo-European and West African elements. However, it does not make them strictly Indo-European and thus this should not be put on the infobox.

The article should keep with the consistency of other Creole language articles on Wikipedia. Mentioning its parental ties should be made somewhere on the article body or intro instead. Being descended from French should already be a given that it is affiliated with the Indo-European family. - Moalli ( talk) 07:52, 23 February 2016 (UTC)

I noticed this change also LLarson; Moalli. A "creole," may it be French-derived, Portuguese-derived, or even Assamese-derived? (see: Nagamese Creole; spoken in India) etc, it is an undeniable fact that the word "Creole" is completely ambiguous. It is only a matter of time before Haitian Creole, drops it from its name, being one of a handful of "Creole" officials in the world and capable of surviving, unlike "Louisiana Creole French," and the increasing want or need for Jamaicans to speak English, a benefactor in the commerce world as English is more than ever, becoming the lingua-franca of the modern world.

What is French to Latin? (Short answer) The French language evolved from migrating predominately north, but yet it is still a "Latin-based" (or Romance-based) language even though unintelligible to each other (but not completely unintelligible which is based on percentages, the bottom half or top half in declaration). That is precisely what these sources are implying about Haitian Creole (it also is not 0% unintelligible; it could bottom half it out to 35-40% and still be unintelligible, but the relation remains!). How can the root the language be anything other then French- or Latin- or Romance- or Indo-European- based? 90-95% of the language would agree. So the pronunciations of vowels were changed and replaced ("u" to "i") << (also evident in the Sicilian language) a Germanic writing structure etc., that may distance itself from the colonial imported language spoken and written, but it is still none other than a Indo-European based language, with influences of sentence structure differences taken from African languages that may have also been taken from the grammatical variations from the oïls, which are both theories on their own. If Haitian Creole is so African-derived then where is it all? We've been searching for years. It was originally coined "Creole" (or patois) because it was once a regional language that differed from the mainland, spoken by the creoles or the "colony-born." Just look at the Joual, or the Yiddish language and tell me they could not too be classified as a "creole" as well, but then again they both were missing an African-demographic so how could they be; no they couldn't be?

During the 17-18th centuries, there were many dialects of French, or the oïls, but after the French Revolution and the kings and queens were put to death, the languages of the "streets of Paris" (the common folk) became the standard, which is further why the languages are less intelligible today. The French people today can barely understand "modern- or classic French" never-mind a creole. The Frenchman who came to Saint-Domingue, were mostly (one might also say uneducated?) buccaneers, rural countrymen or engagés, who came from all over France where these oïl languages were spoken prominently. To fuse the infobox, with Indo-European origins, while denoting where French-creole emerged down the line is not a fallacy, it is inevitable and according to the sources at hand, it does not call for WP:POV or WP:OR. We do not have the vast information available and the editors dedicated enough to accommodate every "creole" article (like what we have undergone here) at this time.

So people will continue to ask the question, where did this "(French) Creole" come from? -but then they will begin to realize, that they just answered their own question. Savvyjack23 (talk) 05:33, 6 April 2016 (UTC)

@Savvyjack23 and Moalli: Regardless of what other creole languages list for lineage, Haitian Creole is Romance, Italic, and Indo‑European and cited three reliable sources for it. That part belongs back up. The other question is more problematic: what’s the lineage of a language with provenance from at least two continents? We don’t dispute that French is one of the language’s progenitors; but Wolof is, too.^[1] —LLarson (said & done) 13:41, 26 April 2016 (UTC)

Nasal vowels

I don't understand explanation of nasal vowels.

How is /ã/ nasalized /ɒ/?

How is /ɔ̃/ nasalized /o/? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.30.113.88 (talk) 19:24, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

"Only language of 95% of the population"

The introduction made this specific claim twice before I changed the "95%" to "most". There is no doubt that the great majority of the population speaks Creole natively, but it is difficult to assess how many Creole speakers can also speak French, as hard data on language knowledge in Haiti is difficult to come by. (I know the New York Times article, which we are using as a source, provides the "sole language of 95% " claim, but it's unclear where they obtained that figure from.) 68.49.171.46 (talk) 19:44, 5 June 2016 (UTC)

I agree with this change. In fact I found an official francophonie estimate that had this "percentage" a lot higher than this. The problem with "5%" is that there is an assumption out there that only the colored, whites or elites speak French (which is the same "5%" occasionally used for population of this ethnic group). These sources reek of biases and hold no actual factual value whatsoever. Savvyjack23 (talk) 19:34, 3 July 2016 (UTC)

'Mutually comprehensible with French'

The correct English term is 'mutually intelligible with....'.178.197.239.204 (talk) 14:36, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

I agree. Savvyjack23 (talk) 23:14, 7 February 2017 (UTC)

Lexicon

I do not think we have sources for this section. I am having great difficulty locating them. Savvyjack23 (talk) 05:43, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

(Recent change) "Kònflèks" → kònfleks; the former sounds like konn-flex when it should have a "flay" sound hence dropping the è. In simpliest terms, English "-flakes" and HC "-fleks" should sound about the same. Savvyjack23 (talk) 07:26, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Value of etymology section

The etymology section covers the generic word "creole", but that's already covered where it should be, under Creole language and Creole peoples. Can we not count on someone who wonders where the word "creole" comes from to follow the link at the beginning of the article to Creole language? It just seems redundant here, like providing the etymology of the word "history" under every "History of X" article. Largoplazo (talk) 18:01, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

"héler" is a modern word

The verb "héler" is relatively new in French, it is an anglism from the verb "to hail." So this never was replaced by the word "appeler," which always been the good one.

Furthermore, "héler" is only use on boats to say "to call." It was never used to ask someone's name. It is the same as for Canadian French, some words used onboard were still used in the colony.

http://www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/_h%C3%A9ler/39338 https://www.littre.org/definition/h%C3%A9ler

↑ ↑ This section was added 25 January 2018 by IP user 24.201.187.26. --Thnidu (talk) 17:20, 30 April 2018 (UTC)